


you + i

by carminesunset



Series: Potion Shop AU [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Fluff, M/M, Magic, Nicky Hemmick - Freeform, Vaguely Medieval setting, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-11-02 10:30:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20715134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carminesunset/pseuds/carminesunset
Summary: Ever since Andrew met Neil, his life has been changed by him little by little. This time is no different.(epilogue to "maybe it's fate (or just dumb luck)")





	you + i

**Author's Note:**

> This is the epilogue for my reversebigbang fic, "maybe it's fate (or just dumb luck)"! please read that if you haven't already <3
> 
> Thank u so so much to Ly (adverbialstarlight @ tumblr) for beta-ing this!!

Andrew notices the rabbit as he is walking home after closing the shop. It is unusually bold and doesn’t quite manage to muffle its noises as it hops in the underbrush behind him.

He pauses. The thump of the rabbit’s feet also stops. He turns.

“Did Neil tell you to follow me?” Andrew asks the rabbit, putting his fists on his hips. 

The rabbit’s nose twitches innocently. Andrew can’t understand it, but he bets that it’s laughing at him.

The rabbit hops forward until it is sitting at his feet.

“I could catch you and eat you, you know,” Andrew threatens, but he gently picks up the creature. A note is attached to the rabbit’s neck with twine like a collar. Andrew plucks it from the rabbit’s neck and sets the creature down. The rabbit hops a few feet away, though not too far. It settles down to watch. 

Andrew rolls his eyes at the rabbit and pries open the rolled up paper.

“Andrew,” it says. “Meet me here xoxo see you soon.” Underneath is a crudely drawn map of the forest around Neil’s cottage. He’s marked several landmarks, such as “the tree with the branch that looks like a you-know-what” and “the river bend where that willow won’t stop crying”, and, in one spot, a simple smiley face. Neil has marked a spot on the map with a great big X and several arrows pointing to it. It doesn’t take much deduction to know this is where Neil wants Andrew to meet him. There’s a small clearing there that Andrew suspects may have to do with with Neil appearing at the shop a little less often these days.

“Thanks,” Andrew says to the rabbit. It hops forward to nuzzle its face against his ankle and then hops away into the forest. He changes directions to meet with Neil.

The clearing is different than he remembers it when he pushes past the line of trees. The undergrowth has been mostly cleared, and there is a family of deer lounging and grazing at the outskirts. They are likely the same ones he saw when he first visited Neil many months ago.

At the center of the clearing, Neil has set up blankets, pillows, and a basket. 

“What are you doing?” Andrew picks his way over to Neil, who is apparently crouched over a family of… foxes? Neil waves him back.

“Wait, wait, not yet!” 

Andrew obligingly steps back a few paces. After a few moments, Neil finishes whispering to the foxes and they scamper away into the forest. 

“Okay! You’re good.” He gestures for Andrew to join him on the blankets and throws another blanket over both their shoulders.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“All will be revealed,” Neil says in mock-seriousness. “C’mere.” He raises an arm.

“No way,” Andrew says but scoots closer anyway. “Seriously, what is this for?”

Neil doesn’t answer; he adjusts the blanket so it can better capture their warmth. “Just wait for it. Look.” He points up, where the sky has turned purple and red with the sunset. Neil reaches over to the basket beside them and hands Andrew a wrapped sandwich. They watch and nibble on their food as the sun sets.

“_ Now _ are you going to tell me?” Andrew asks when the horizon turns a deep purple. Andrew’s breath fogs up the air, and his voice is hardly a whisper. 

“_ Shh. _ We’re almost there,” Neil hushes him. The gust of breath against his neck makes Andrew shiver. 

Night completely sets in, and Andrew can eventually make out the stars in the sky. But then a tiny light flickers on in his peripheral vision — then another, and another, and another. Before he can blink, the entire clearing is filled with tiny, flickering lights. He hears rustling, and the foxes come bounding out from the treeline, colored lights flowing out from behind them.

“Can you talk to bugs, now? Is that how you managed to get this many fireflies?”

“There’s this thing called magic, dummy.”

The foxes yip and tumble across the field, sparks of magic sputtering behind them, leaving bright trails in their wake. The clearing floods with waves of fireflies; it feels as though the stars themselves have spilled from the sky and surrounded them.

And Andrew can’t help himself — “Wow.” He reaches out a hand; a firefly lands on his finger. “It’s so beautiful.” The firefly walks around on his finger pausing every moment or so as if to say, ‘_ Look at how I make the stars seem dull in comparison!’. _

“It really is.” Neil sounds distracted. Andrew turns to look at Neil, but he isn’t looking at the foxes or the lights. He’s staring at Andrew, instead. He doesn’t look embarrassed at all to be caught staring.

“What?” Andrew asks warily.

“Just enjoying the view,” Neil answers with his stupidly charming smile. Andrew can feel his ears burn in embarrassment. 

“Oh, fuck off.” He shoves at Neil’s face until they’re both sprawling across the grass in a tangle of limbs and giggles.

And this is where they end up: Neil sprawled on his back, arms wrapped loosely around Andrew. He can hear the trees whispering, but the thump of Neil’s heartbeat under his ear distracts him from their words. The grass echoes the night owls’ chirrups, and Andrew can’t imagine any place better than here.

The light of the fireflies has died down to the occasional twinkle in the clearing. From where he lay, Andrew can maybe see the family of foxes curled up amongst themselves not too far away. 

Neil gets restless, apparently, and wiggles himself down and around until he is lying on his side facing Andrew. The night has cooled down almost unpleasantly, but between the warmth of the blanket and their shared body heat, Andrew hardly notices.

Neil takes his hand, and Andrew gives it to him willingly.

Between one blink and the next, Neil ties a piece of grass around Andrew’s middle finger.

“Andrew,” he says, fiddling with the piece of grass. “Do you want to get married?”

“Aren’t you supposed to ask me _ before _ putting the ring on me?”

“Is that a no?” Neil asks cheekily.

“... It’s not a no.”

“I promise I’ll wash all the dishes and weed the garden. And give you a foot rub, and we can adopt as many cats as you want, and — ”

“No birds nesting in our bed. Not after what happened last time.”

“I promise.”

“Then fine. I guess we can get married.” Andrew curls his hand into Neil’s and pulls him close, breath ghosting over his face. “Yes or no?”

“_ Yes, _” Neil breathes, and Andrew steals his laugh with a kiss.

-

On the day of their wedding, the rabbit visits him again. They had initially decided on a small outdoor ceremony involving just friends and family, but before they knew it, it seemed like half of the town was invited. 

Andrew can’t remember when he let so many people into his life.

The old retired headmaster, Wymack, is coming with Abby as his plus-one to no one’s surprise. (A fact that all his former students are sure to tease him about, sooner or later.) Dan is coming with her husband, and Kevin and Thea procured the flowers for their ceremony. Even the baker and his husband are coming. Aaron has the honor of being Andrew’s best man.

“Is… that a rabbit?” Aaron asks from where he is fiddling with his coat. “It seems oddly intelligent, doesn’t it?”

Andrew stares at the creature, and it merrily twitches its pink nose at him.

“He does realize that we’ll be seeing each other in a few minutes, right? What does he even need to tell me?” Andrew bends down, and the rabbit hops right into his arms. He unravels the scroll of paper tied around its neck.

_ I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you, _ it says.

“What is it?” Aaron asks, peering over his shoulder.

“It’s nothing important,” Andrew replies, shoving him away lightly. He carefully puts the note into his pocket and lets the rabbit hop away.

“Alright, well.” Aaron smooths down Andrew’s tense shoulders. It’s a testament to Andrew’s nerves that he allows Aaron to touch him so casually. “You’ll be fine. Remember what you told me when I married Katelyn?”

“Of course I do, I’m the one who said it.”

Aaron continues on, ignoring him. “You won’t fuck up. He won’t fuck up. So shut the fuck up.”

“I don’t think that really applies here, you were blubbering on the floor — ”

“Andrew? Shut the fuck up.”

-

They’re married with the sunset at their backs, crowns of flowers adorning their heads and dripping down their shoulders, and their friends and family at their sides. The Hatfords can’t make it — officially, at least. Andrew sees flickers of magic at the edge of the forest watching them.

They clasp each other’s hands and a strand of their combined magic curls around them, thick in the air. The trees and grass shiver with anticipation.

“Will you share each other’s pain and seek to erase it?” Nicky asks them, a hand hovering over their clasped ones.

“Yes,” they reply. A ribbon of deep blue wraps itself around their wrists.

“Will you help each other grow in spirit and in wisdom?”

“Yes,” they reply. A ribbon of emerald green twines within the blue.

“Will you share the burdens of each so that your spirits may grow in this union?”

“Yes,” they reply. A white ribbon braids itself into the midst of the other two.

“Will you take the heat of anger and use it to temper this union?”

“Yes,” they reply. Andrew squeezes Neil’s hand. The final red ribbon curls itself around the rest.

“You are now bound together, your two lives joined by love and trust into one life.” Nicky finishes the ceremony with a flourish of his wrist, releasing the newly-bound ribbons. 

The swell of magic bursts between them in a shimmer of golden light, and Andrew can distantly hear the clapping and cheering of his friends and family. Family which now included Neil. The ribbons have dissolved into intricate knots tattooed onto the skin of their ring fingers. Even now he can feel the new bond pulsing between them gently.

Neil pulls him close until their foreheads are touching. “Can I kiss you?” he asks.

“Yes,” Andrew replies. Neil shields his face from the crowd with the palm of his hand, bending down slightly to kiss him.

-

Later, in the bed of Neil’s — no, _ their _ — home, Andrew holds Neil’s hand in his own, staring at the way their hands and rings fit together. Unlike a normal tattoo, the rings pulse in tandem with their hearts, and if he brushes them against each other, he can hear the bond between them spark and sing. When he laces their fingers together, he can feel their combined warmth flow through him, from his fingertips to his toes to the ends of his hair. 

“What are you thinking about?” Neil asks. 

“You. Us,” Andrew answers honestly. Neil kisses the back of Andrew’s hand.

“Are you happy?” Neil murmurs, blue eyes hidden in the dark. “With this. With us. With defining us.”

Once, Andrew would have said that he didn’t know — that he liked Neil because he was interesting. 

But that was before Neil made his heart beat faster, made the palm of his hands sweat, and made Andrew realize that kissing for the sake of kissing was something that could be savored and cherished.

Andrew kisses the back of Neil’s hand.

‘Yeah,” he replies. “I’m happy.”

“Me too,” Neil says.

Andrew watches the rings ebb and flow with the beat of their hearts. Neil’s breathing slows, and his steady heart beat follows.

“I love you,” he says on impulse. It feels alien on his tongue. Odd. He’s not sure if he’ll ever say it again.

It feels so _right_.

Neil doesn’t answer, save for a squeeze of his hand and a quick flash of a smile. Andrew hears it all the same:

_ I love you, too. _

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider popping by my tumblr (mokuuton) !! I have so many headcanons (canons?) and lore for this universe that i just haven't been able to fit in the main fic or the epilogue. If you're interested, please pop me an ask, or just pop by if you have a question about the universe!  
(Also, please consider subscribing to this series -- I have more in the works for small sequels featuring other background couples. ;DDD )
> 
> Scenes I deleted:  
\- a flock of doves adorning them with flowers  
\- scene where wymack gives andrew an awkward congrats. Andrew then asks when wymack and abby are getting married (lol)


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